


Home is a safe place

by thewolvescalledmehome



Series: Home [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/M, First Fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 20:49:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14901759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewolvescalledmehome/pseuds/thewolvescalledmehome
Summary: Jon and Sansa's first fight.Follow up to I'll Make You Feel Like Home.





	Home is a safe place

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all, I'm so sorry for taking so long to post this. I've been plucking away at it for months. I'm off work for two days and I knock out almost this whole thing in two sittings.
> 
> Hopefully this means the other fics I have planned in this verse will be up by the end of August.

**Jon**

In all honesty, Jon thought he was far better prepared for this the second time around than he had been the first.

He had spent most of his life sharing a bathroom or a bedroom or both, so when he and Ygritte had moved in together, he hadn’t expected it to be all that different than the roommates and other kids he’d lived with before.

Only he hadn’t been ready for the boxes of tampons on the back of the toilet or the red hair in the shower. He hadn’t been ready for the constant struggle for covers in the middle of the night. Or the fact that Ygritte somehow managed to take up nearly the whole bed despite the fact that she was actually smaller than him. Or her bad habit of waiting too long to wash dishes and her uncanny ability to con him into doing them all the time.

No, he was prepared this time.

He was anticipating boxes of feminine hygiene products on full display in the bathroom (there weren’t any—Sansa kept her purple boxes in the cabinet under the sink) and though they’d been living together for a few months he hadn’t seen an abundance of hair in the shower (aside from the dog hair that inevitably got everywhere).

He and Sansa also had no struggles sharing the bed or covers. Though he would’ve completely understood if Sansa ended up taking up more space in the bed, given that she was actually taller than him.

What he wasn’t prepared for was the fact that they’d been living together for just about three months, and he hadn’t felt tension in his shoulders once.

He remembered when he lived with Ygritte and after the first three weeks, could not get rid of the knots along his spine from keeping his shoulders so tense. They’d been dating for just about a year, but in moving in together, he had learned far more about her in a week than he had in the year previously.

He learned a lot about Sansa too—like the fact that, while she owned full-length flannel pajama pants, she never wore them to bed. She’d come to bed in either shorts or no pants. She also craved melted cheese when she was on her period, which he actually thought was kind of cute. There was also her habit of stealing his clothes—t-shirts, gym shorts, hoodies, boxers to sleep in—which he found out was a surprisingly large turn on.

But none of the new information he learned about Sansa since they’ve moved in together set him on edge. It was _nice_. Even when he was at the apartment alone—aside from the dogs—he didn’t feel alone. He remembered that feeling he’d had after Sansa had come to his apartment for the first time—when they were just barely friends—when she’d left but her air and presence still filled the space, making him feel warm and not alone.

Living with her was like cocooning himself in that feeling.

Jon stretched, rolling into the warm of the space Sansa just left. He knew he’d have to scoot back over as soon as she’d let the dogs out, but there was something oddly intimate about pushing his face into her pillow and inhaling the scent of her—the shampoo, the lotion, and just her—that specific combination that he couldn’t get anywhere but her pillow right after her head’s left it.

Jon didn’t think he’d ever smiled first thing in the morning until he was waking up next to Sansa every day.

“Hey, you stole my spot,” he heard her whisper. He started to shift back to his side, but Sansa slid in beside him, pressing the length of her against him.

“Shit, you’re cold,” he gasped, struggling to get away, but Sansa wrapped her arms and legs tentacle-like around him, pressing her chilly skin against his own sleep-warmed skin. “I don’t do this to you when I let the dogs out!” he groaned, sinking into her grasp.

Sansa giggled in response—though it sounded a bit more like a cackle in Jon’s opinion.

Instead, he flipped them so that he was hovering over Sansa, wrapping the quilt around both of them and laying his head on her chest. Sansa laughed some more—he could feel the vibrations and her stomach quivering against him. Her still-chilly hands traced his back, rippling his skin with goosebumps for multiple reasons.

“Noo, we’ve got to get up. It’s nearly ten,” she said softly, one hand moving up and into his loose and wild hair.

“Five more minutes,” he mumbled into her collarbone. Her hand continued to slip though his hair, her nails scratching lightly against his scalp. “This is not going to get me out of bed any faster,” he added a minute later, after he started to feel his eyes get heavy.

“No? What about this?”

Sansa’s had moved quickly, squeezing between their bodies until her hand palmed his cock.

Jon was wide awake then.

“Keep that up and we’ll definitely be in bed a lot longer,” he warned gently, trying to mentally force his blood northwards. Sansa grinned but let go.

Jon considered kissing her, moving her hand back. It was Saturday. Neither of them had anything going on. They could definitely afford to spend a few more hours in bed.

Just as he bent his head to nibble on her ear, there was scratching at the door. He groaned, dropping his head down onto her shoulder.

“Your turn,” she declared, poking his chest until he got up.

Jon sighed and got out of bed, moving more quickly than he normally did in the morning due to the incessant scratching at the door.

He heard Sansa get up behind him and he mentally sighed. He had been hoping to let the dogs in fast enough that he could get Sansa back in bed for a bit longer, but if she was up she was up.

That was fine, though. They had all day—more, actually.

Jon let the dogs in and got started on breakfast while Sansa switched from her actual pajamas to what she called her day-pajamas.

“What do you want to do tonight?” Sansa called from their bedroom.

“Netflix released a bunch of new stuff. We can see if there’s anything good,” he shrugged.

Sansa was still in the other room but he felt the shift in the air. She didn’t respond right away. Jon knew six months ago he would’ve been filled with anxiety. Now he was just filled with irritation.

“So you don’t want to go out tonight?” she asked, still in the other room.

No, he didn’t. They’d gone out nearly every Saturday of the semester. Not only was it exhausting, but it was beginning to get expensive.

It wasn’t always with others or even to The Crooked Mane. It alternated between them going out to a movie, going to dinner, going to a club, or going to a bar with some friends. And sometimes it was his friends—last weekend they’d gone to Flea’s Bottom with the lads from the shop.

It was nothing like any of his irritation towards Ygritte, but he wanted a weekend at home. To actually relax. He didn’t want to wear jeans. He wanted to spend all day with Sansa in bed—not that he thought that would happen today—but cuddling up and watching a movie together sounded far better to him than going out anywhere with anyone.

“Not really,” he answered honestly.

“Okay. Netflix it is.”

There was nothing resembling resentment in her tone, but Jon felt an edge in there somewhere. He wasn’t sure if it was in her words, her tone, or just something in the air. Or if he was imagining it.

He was sure he was imagining it. He knew Sansa would come out and say something if she was irritated. She’d done it before, when they first moved in together and he kept forgetting to put both toilet seats down. Or the handful of times since then, when he’d gone to the bathroom tipsy or half asleep and forgotten.

When Sansa came out of the bedroom, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed the back of his neck—the place she always kissed whenever he wore his hair up. He smiled and her warmth seep through him—loosening muscles he didn’t realized were tensed.

* * *

Jon had spread out his research on his desk, deciding if he and Sansa weren’t going to spend the day in bed, he better be productive. Midterms were coming up and he needed to focus on his schoolwork, rather than the feel of Sansa beside him.

After the first month of living together, Jon realized they couldn’t study together in the same room anymore. When they were friends, he could focus. It was his focus that kept him from wondering what her skin felt like or whether she thought about him as much as he tried not to think about her.

Now he knew what her skin felt like and how often she thought of him. He also knew that he distracted her as easily as she did him. Which was why during the first few weeks of the semester, neither of them got much schoolwork done while they were both in the apartment—which was how they came to christen the furniture in the living room.

They both decided to study in separate rooms when they actually needed to focus—so Jon studied at his desk in the bedroom and Sansa spread out on the coffee table in the living room.

It was while he was engrossed in an essay analyzing the effects of Robert’s Rebellion on the modernization of Westeros that his phone went off, yanking him back to the present.

Jon picked it up, expecting it to be Davos, asking if he could cover a shift, but it was an alarm, reminding him to pay the bills.

He groaned, silencing the alarm, feeling some of that tension from earlier creep back into his spine.

Jon set another reminder, thinking that he could finish taking notes on the essay he had been reading before taking a break to pay the bills, but he was unable to refocus, the thought of paying the bills too consuming.

After not making any headway in twenty minutes, Jon closed his book, moving it to the side so that he could pull his laptop forward and log in to the various accounts to pay the utilities. He quickly paid the bills, then pulled up a window to open his bank account.

He groaned again, running his hand through his hair and loosening it from its knot.

The utility accounts were all in his name, given that he’d already had accounts from living on his own for so long. It was easier to just change the address than creating all new accounts for Sansa. The only problem with that, Jon realized, was that Sansa was not actually the one paying for her half. It was her parents. Which meant that once she found out how much her half was, she had to call her parents, and either have them send a check or transfer the money to Jon. And Jon didn’t want to say that Sansa was forgetful, but she usually called her parents by the time the next bill was due.

Pushing away from the desk and steeling himself subconsciously, Jon headed for the living room.

“Just paid the bills,” he mentioned, walking across toward the kitchen, as if he was actually up for another purpose.

“Oh, great, thanks. I’ll call my parents after I finish this paper,” she said. Jon felt his muscles coil. “I’ll write myself a note,” she added a second later, as if she knew.

“Okay. Thanks.” Jon paused for a moment longer, wondering if he should say something or if she would, but he didn’t. Instead, he went back to his laptop, opened his budgeting spreadsheet, added in the amount he paid and the date. He left the cell next to it blank, as was the one above it.

It was the column that indicated whether or not Sansa had paid him back.

* * *

**Sansa**

Sansa didn’t realize how different moving in with Jon would be. She’d had a roommate when she lived in the dorms her first year, shared a communal bathroom—she’d expected moving in with Jon to be like that, mixed with the weekends they’d spent together last semester, holed up in his apartment.

Only she’d never shared a bathroom with a boy—not that Jon was messy, but there were no illusions anymore, not like when she was only there for a weekend. But she could adjust to that. And she could learn to be comfortable with Jon knowing those types of things about her—like when she was on her period, the brand of pads she preferred, the ugly underwear she wore just incase anything leaked.

In their three months of living together, she learned to adjust to all that, but that was easy. Those were things that were to be expected when you moved in with anyone.

It was the parts of Jon’s personality that were revealed to her that she was unprepared for.

She thought after how long they’d been dating, and the fact that they’d pretty much been roommates for two and a half months at her parents’, that she knew all the big things about him. But there were things she was surprised about.

One of those things was how _serious_ and _adult_ Jon was. She knew he was older—he was Robb’s age—and that he’d had to grow up faster than most, what with his childhood, but he had budgeting spreadsheets and every time they went out or spent money, he would update it.

She supposed he must’ve done that when they started dating, but she’d never seen it because they weren’t living together. It took the spontaneity out of everything.

She didn’t know why it irritated her. She understood why he did it—she supposed in the grand scheme of things it was really smart and grown up, but they were in their early twenties. They didn’t need to be that serious, she thought. She was only twenty. She didn’t want to grow up that much yet.

Sansa couldn’t express her frustration or irritation about that though—or how it seemed like Jon always wanted to just stay in—because she didn’t want to be like Ygritte. She didn’t know how Ygritte had felt about the spreadsheets or Jon not going out, but even if those weren’t things that irritated her, she didn’t want to do anything that sounded like Ygritte, so she’d learned to adapt.

* * *

Sansa was having a bad day. She’d had a bad critique in one of her classes, she was on the first days of her period, aching and cramping, and Jon had gotten up early to go to work, but he hadn’t been as quiet as he usually was, and had woken her up. She hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep, which was probably the root of all of her problems for the day.

Instead of doing anything productive, like working on the practice sketches assigned for one of her classes, or the application she’d been considering in her desk drawer, but both of those would mean being responsible and functional.

And she wasn’t feeling up to that. So instead, she was curled up in bed with the heating pad covering her lower stomach and a dog on either side of her. She was stroking Lady’s fur and she found the repetitive motion therapeutic.

* * *

The door closing yanked her from her light sleep. She’d drifted off with the heating pad switched to her back and the dogs curled around her. She’d fallen asleep with the lights off as it had been midafternoon and the sun coming through the windows had been enough light, but it was dark now. Or at least, it should’ve been, but Jon had flipped on the light when he came in.

“Gah,” she groaned, rolling over and yanking a blanket over her head.

“Darling? You okay?”

“Mmm.” The bed shifted under her as Ghost jumped off, then again as Jon sat where Ghost had been.

“That didn’t sound like an answer.”

“Period pains. Bad day. ‘M fine.”

Sansa still had her eyes closed but she felt Jon’s hand as it slipped gently through the hair at her temple.

“Hmm,” she hummed, leaning into the touch.

“Can I do anything for you?”

“Start dinner?” she whispered, squinting one eye open.

“A’course,” he muttered, leaning down to kiss her forehead. Sansa’s lips quirked up at the touch before the bed shifted again and she could hear Jon plodding to the kitchen.

Sansa fell back into sleep to the sound of Jon making dinner in the kitchen.

It was a half hour later when she woke up again, Jon gently shaking her awake.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“M’kay.”

Sansa curled into the kitchen chair, pulling the bowl of pasta close to her. Her joints ached still and she’d really rather still be in bed. Asleep. For the next year.

“Hey, did you get a chance to talk to your parents yet?” Jon asked. Sansa thought his voice sounded off—quieter maybe, more like it had been when they first met almost a year ago. But his voice hadn’t done that in months—not since they’d moved in together, at least. It must’ve just been the fogginess of her brain, she figured. There was no way he was slipping back into that shy, hesitant boy over her _calling her parents_. That’d be ridiculous.

“No,” she answered, a bit brusque.

“I thought you wrote yourself a note.”

Sansa glanced sharply at him, but he was looking at the bowl his fork was poking around in.

“I did. I haven’t had time, Jon,” she snapped.

There was a pause, and Sansa felt the tension fill the air.

She wasn’t hyperaware of it though, the way she normally would’ve been. She wasn’t wondering if she was pushing a line, if she was saying anything resembling something Ygritte would’ve said or done. She wasn’t worrying about how Jon was feeling and how to make sure he felt loved.

She was irritated.

“But you will call? As soon as you have time?”

Sansa was still looking at him so she saw the little glance he shot her way out of the corner of his eye.

“Of course I will.”

The words themselves sounded reassuring, but they didn’t come out with that tone.

They came out bitter and more than a little annoyed.

“Okay,” Jon said slowly, softly, quietly.

Hesitantly.

“I was just ch…asking…because, you know… I still need… last month’s…”

Irrational vexation rose in her.

The spreadsheet floated to the front of her mind. She remembered when he’d showed her the chart he’d made, right after they’d moved in. She’d initially thought _how mature_ , and _how handy_. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about keeping track of anything.

That was before she’d seen his other spreadsheets and before she realized how _mature_ he was compared to her.

“I’m not a child, Jon,” Sansa snapped. She set the bowl back on the table and dragged herself back to bed, flinging herself under the covers, and hoping for sleep before she could think about what she’d said.

Or start imagining how Jon reacted.

* * *

When Sansa woke up the next morning, she expected some sort of confrontation. She expected him to be upset. She expected guilt to force her into an apology. She expected puppy dog eyes.

She didn’t expect him to act like nothing happened.

Like she hadn’t snapped at him.

All week, she kept waiting for him to say something about it, but all week nothing happened.

It was Saturday night, four days since she’d snapped at him, when it finally came back up.

She was near the end of her period and she had cabin fever. She wanted to go out, after a spending nearly all week in bed avoiding people.

“The lads up for Flea’s Bottom tonight? Or The Crooked Mane? Something? I need to get out of the apartment.” She flopped down next to him on the sofa, turning to put her head in his lap, her hair covering the pages of the book he was reading.

“I dunno. I’d have to check.”

“Check with the lads or check your spreadsheet?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Erm…” Jon cleared his throat, shifting beneath her. She sat up quickly, moving to the other end of the sofa so that they weren’t touching anymore. “What does that mean?” he asked quietly, voice strained.

“Every time we go out, you check that damn spreadsheet.”

“It’s a budget, Sansa. It’s to make sure I have enough money to go out,” he responded logically, calmly.

It irked her.

“I get that. I understand that, but…” she trailed off. She didn’t want to go there with Jon.

She didn’t want to be like Ygritte.

“ _But_?” he prompted, eyes suddenly flinty.

“But it takes the spontaneity out of everything!”

Jon looked at her softly suddenly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that.”

“I know. I _know_ it’s practical but…”

“ _But_?” he asked again.

All of the pent up emotions Sansa shoved down suddenly spewed out—angry and ugly.

“Seven hells, Jon, we’re young! We’re in our twenties—we’re not _old_. We don’t need to act like we are. We don’t need to check spreadsheets to go out _once_ on a Saturday night.”

“I know, Sansa. But you’ve gotta understand, how I grew up… I had to grow up fast.”

Sansa groaned, dragging her hand over her face.

“I know, I know. But every time, Jon? Do we have to schedule our dates? Around when we have money to go out? Do we have to stay in every other weekend you don’t? Do you have that much pride that I can’t pay for dates?”

“You do pay for dates,” Jon reminded quietly. Sansa wasn’t listening though, her mouth working faster than her brain.

“Do we have to start scheduling our sex, too? Should we start a spreadsheet for that?” Sansa was nearly yelling, face flushed.

She should feel embarrassed. She should feel guilty. She should feel worried about whether or not this was something he and Ygritte fought about.

She definitely shouldn’t have felt relief—like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

“Yeah, well, we can’t all live off our parents, can we?” Jon retorted. His voice was far more controlled than hers had been.

It took a second for Sansa to register the words, to make meaning out of them.

As soon as she did, she stared at Jon in shock.

And then Jon was bolting, out the door before she could react.

Before he could see her cry.

* * *

**Jon**

_Stupid, stupid, stupid_.

Jon thought he was having a panic attack. His heart was pounding, his head was pounding, his muscles were quivering.

But that could’ve all been because he’d ran all the way from the apartment to the nearest bus stop that could take him to Flea’s Bottom—the sharp words he said to Sansa spinning in his head, making him sick.

He thanked the old gods when he saw Tormund was the bartender on duty.

Tormund knew him and Sansa. Tormund would talk him down.

Talk him out of his fears.

That he would return to the apartment and find Sansa gone.

“Jon? No Sansa today?”

Jon shot him a look that had Tormund setting down a shot glass in front of him and filling it with whiskey.

“What happened?”

Jon swallowed the shot, wincing at the burn.

He didn’t normally drink whiskey straight. He normally drank beer. He didn’t like the burn of the harder liquors.

The burn was what he needed now though.

It combatted the burn he felt behind his eyes.

“Another,” he croaked, sliding the glass back over. Tormund’s ruddy brows rose, but he poured the shot without comment.

“What happened?” Tormund asked again, once Jon had taken the second shot.

“We had a fight,” he said quietly, fingers fidgeting the empty glass back and forth between his palms.

“Ah, I’m sure it’s not that bad…” Tormund started, gentle and reassuring. It made Jon bristle. He didn’t deserve gentle and reassuring, after what he said to her. “What was the fight about?”

“Money, I guess? I dunno.”

Tormund let out a low whistle.

“Money, huh?”

Slowly and painfully, over the course of several beers, Jon explained his spreadsheets, his budgeting, alluding to how he grew up and why he budgeted the way he did. He explained a little about Sansa’s family, and how she’s never had a job.

He explained Sansa’s outburst.

Jon repeated the hurtful and stupid thing he’d spat at her.

He didn’t know why he’d said it.

He didn’t know it had been something that had been bothering him.

With Ygritte, they hadn’t been equals in a lot of ways, but they were both self-sufficient. Neither of them had support systems to fall back on, so they had to make sure not to fall. Not to forget deadlines. Not to fall short on payments. If there was something Ygritte was good at, it was paying her half back on time.

Jon knew it wasn’t Sansa’s fault. It wasn’t something she could help—the fact that she had a loving family and he didn’t. He’d been doing so well at not letting it get to him.

At believing they could be his family too.

“You didn’t mean it,” Tormund said as soon as Jon repeated what he’d said. “What’d she say?”

“Nothing,” Jon muttered.

“She didn’t say anything?”

“I dunno.”

“You dunno or she didn’t say anything?” Tormund clarified skeptically.

“I dunno. I left.”

“ _You LEFT?_ ” Tormund yelled. “Why the FUCK would you leave?”

“I wanted to leave before she could,” he muttered, downing the rest of his beer.

“Seven hells, Jon.”

Tormund got another shot glass out from under the bar, sloshed whiskey into it, and when Jon thought he was going to pass it to him, Tormund threw it back himself.

“You’re a fucking idiot then,” Tormund stated as he slammed the glass down. “What you said was stupid, but you’re allowed to be stupid in a fight. You are _not allowed to leave_ during a fight. You think she would’ve left?”

 _Ygritte would’ve,_ he thought.

When they had big blow ups, Ygritte would say something cold, calculating, and cutting and then leave before he could respond. He’d sit around, wondering when she was coming home, what he would say when she did. By the time he woke up the next morning, she’d be snoring beside him, like nothing happened.

There was never any apologizing, any making up, any changes.

With a sinking sense of shock, Jon realized that comment, those biting words, were exactly what Ygritte would’ve said.

He thought he was going to be sick again.

“No,” he admitted.

But part of him was terrified she wouldn’t be there when he went home.

“You need to go home. Here.” Tormund handed him a water bottle from beneath the bar. “Did you drive?”

“Bus.”

“Good. Drink that, go home. Go apologize. Talk it out. Don’t come back here without her.”

Jon took the water but didn’t open it yet. He stared sullenly at the ring-stained wood of the bar.

“What if she doesn’t accept my apology? What if she’s done? What if she realized I’m not who she thought she was? That she can do so, so much better?” Jon asked in a rush, voicing his deepest fears out loud for the first time.

“Stop being an idiot. She loves you. Go home.”

Jon sighed, cracking open the water.

* * *

**Sansa**

The echo of the door slamming shut reverberated through the apartment, minutes after Jon had left.

The tears were frozen in Sansa’s eyes. She didn’t know what to do. She thought she was dreaming, hallucinating.

When the echo of the door finally stopped and the room filled with silence, a still, empty, isolating silence, and that’s when Sansa broke, the tears falling and sobs building.

With the silence ringing in her ears, Sansa scrambled from the sofa, reaching for her phone.

She did what she always did she was scared and sad and didn’t know what to do.

She called her mum.

“Sansa? Sansa, is everything all right? Are you crying? Are you okay?”

“I’m—I’m fine,” she managed, getting her breathing under control. The tears were still running down her face, but the sobbing had lessened by the time her Catelyn picked up.

“Sansa, what happened?” Catelyn demanded. Sansa heard that protective tone overtake her mum’s voice, and that tone alone was enough to calm her down a little.

“Jon and I had a fight.”

“Aw, no, honey. What happened?” Catelyn’s voice softened, but the protective edge was still there.

Sansa told Catelyn about the fight, and the events leading up to it. She paused when she got to the part about what Jon said.

“Sansa?” Catelyn prompted.

“He said, _we can’t all live off our parents, can we_?”

Even repeating them a second time hurt. Made her feel young. Childish. Babyish.

Entitled.

“Oh, Sansa.”

“It’s my fault. I keep forgetting to call you for my half of the electric bill.”

“Money is always a sticky subject for couples. Especially… especially in a situation like yours,” Catelyn said carefully.

“How? How do we talk about it without fighting? How do we go on from here without it always being this unspoken thing?”

“You gotta work at it, honey. Be honest with each other. Don’t let things build up.”

_Don’t let things build up._

That’s exactly what she’d done. In her fear of being like Ygritte, she pushed everything down, quieted all the voices and emotions that weren’t helpful or supportive or loving.

“You have to listen to each other, compromise. You have to try to look at things logically and not be emotional about it, especially with money,” Catelyn continued.

“Why can’t it just be easy?” Sansa whispered, tears still slowly leaking out of her eyes. She picked at the nail polish she’d put on this morning. In hopes that they’d be going out tonight. She’d wanted to look nice.

“Do you love him?”

“What?” Sansa asked sharply.

“Do you love him?”

“You know I do, Mum.”

“You think he could be the one?”

“I…” Sansa paused, shocked at the question. She hadn’t thought that far head. She just wanted to be with Jon. “Yeah. Yeah, he could be the one.”

“Then work through it, Sansa. Don’t lose everything over something as stupid as the electric bill.”

“Yeah, all right. Can you transfer the money for the electric bill?”

“Yeah, I will. Text me the amount. Call me tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks, Mum.”

“Love you, honey.”

“Love you, too.”

Sansa hung up and texted Catelyn the amount she owed Jon for the past two months of electric bills. Catelyn texted her back not five minutes later that the money had been transferred to Jon’s account.

The speed at which it happened made Sansa queasy. It didn’t even take five minutes to text her parents and transfer the money.

What a stupid reason for a first fight.

-

Sansa had felt better after she’d gotten off the phone with Catelyn, but then she was waiting. Waiting for Jon to come back. Praying that he was.

At first she was worried, but as half an hour turned into two hours, she was pissed off.

She was pissed that Jon ran away in the middle of a fight. She was pissed that he got the last word and didn’t give her a chance to respond or react.

 _Who the hell does that_ , Sansa thought bitterly, pacing around the apartment, agitating the dogs and slamming drawers as she pulled out a spoon for the pint of ice cream she was about to eat in one sitting.

* * *

Sansa was almost hallway through her pint when she heard Jon’s keys in the door. She nearly dropped the pint and spoon and the coffee table before rocketing up to the door, nearly knocking into Jon as he came in.

“What the _HELL_?” she yelled, slamming into him. She’d intended to shove him, push him pack, but instead when they collided she was wrapping her arms around him and covering his mouth with hers. “You don’t get to do that! You don’t disappear in the middle of a fight!” she yelled when she pulled back.

“I’m sorry. I—I…” he started.

“Have you been drinking?” she gasped when she recognized the taste on her tongue.

“Yeah,” he answered sheepishly, looking down. “I went to Flea’s Bottom. I’m not drunk though, I swear.”

“Why the hell did you run away? Why’d you go to Flea’s Bottom?” she demanded.

“I panicked, all right? I don’t… I don’t handle fighting well.”

“Don’t you think I know that? Why do you think I’ve been suppressing everything? I’ve been scared of doing or saying anything that Ygritte would’ve done!”

“You— _what_?” Jon asked, meeting her eyes for the first time since he came home.

“Do you have any idea how _terrified_ I am of doing something that she might’ve done? Of doing something that’ll make you clam back up to who you were when we first met? And then when we have a fight, you run away? Do you have any idea how much that _freaked me out_?” she yelled. The tears were welling up in her eyes again.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing! Talk to me! Yell at me! Communicate with me! We want this to work, we’ve gotta _talk_ —we’ve gotta be _honest_ ,” she said, repeating what Catelyn had told her on the phone.

Sansa stared at him, waiting, waiting for the dam to break. She watched him inhale deeply, enough to move his shoulders.

“I’m not perfect, okay, Sansa?” he started, much quieter than she had been since he’d gotten home.

“ _What_?” she asked, because she did not expect him to start with that. “I know that, Jon.”

“I’m not perfect. I didn’t have a perfect childhood. My first relationship was a little fucked up. My childhood was a little fucked up. _I’m_ a little fucked up. And I’m going to fuck up.”

In the back of Sansa’s head, she realized that was the first time she’d heard Jon say _fuck_ outside of the bedroom, but that wasn’t what mattered. She hadn’t realized what pressure she’d been putting on him.

The same type of pressure she’d been putting on herself to be perfect for him. To be the opposite of Ygritte.

This wasn’t just about money at all.

“I’m not perfect either, Jon,” she said softly.

“But you try _so hard_ to be. Which means I need to try to be. And I can’t, not all the time. And I’m not as fragile as you think,” he added suddenly, grey eyes steel. “I can handle honesty. I can handle irritation. I can’t handle resentment.”

“Okay. Okay. We should sit,” Sansa added, realizing they were still standing in front of the door.

“Yeah, okay.”

Quietly, they sat next to each other on the sofa, space between them, but within reaching distance.

“All right. Where do we start?” Sansa asked.

“Dunno. I’ve never done this before. With Ygritte… she, erm. She’d say the most hurtful thing she could think of then leave. She’d be back in the morning like nothing happened. We’d never talk about it after. We’d be fine until one of us blew up again.”

“Okay. So we shouldn’t do that. Either of us,” she added pointedly. “Why did you leave? You said you panicked, but…”

“I was scared that if I didn’t you would,” he admitted softly.

_Oh._

“Okay. Okay. So we’ll be honest. We’ll say what bothers us. We won’t leave in the middle of fights. What else?”

“We’ll pay each other back on time,” Jon added, leveling at look at her.

“I called Mum when you left. She transferred my half for the last two months.”

“Thanks. But it can’t be by the time the next bill comes in. It needs to be timely.”

“Okay. I’ll work on that. And the spreadsheet thing…”

“We need to add spontaneity. I get that. And you like going out more often.”

“We don’t need to go out every weekend, but like tonight, yeah, I would’ve really liked to go out.”

“Okay.”

“And if it’s my idea to go out, I can pay. You don’t have to pay every time we go out. Or we could split it sometimes.”

“That’s fair.”

“There’s another thing,” Sansa started, quietly. Jon nodded.

“I get that your childhood, you and Ygritte, all of that was fucked up—” Sansa caught the way Jon’s eyebrows rose. He’d never heard her say fuck. “But you can’t throw my family back at me like that. That’s not fair. I can’t control that.”

“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just a hard adjustment. Dating someone with a family. Dating someone who’s close to their family.”

“Is there anything I can…?” Sansa whispered.

“No. It’s not your problem. It’s just something I need to work through.”

“But you’ll tell me when it gets hard? When you’re working through it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll tell you.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Good.”

Sansa quirked her lips up a little and Jon gave her the smallest smile in return. Hesitantly, awkwardly, she reached a hand out, covering Jon’s knee. Hesitantly, awkwardly, his hand covered hers.

* * *

**Jon**

Jon was still trying to wrap his head around everything that happened later that night, watching Sansa’s sleeping face.

They’d sat on the sofa for a while longer, talking, easing themselves out of the awkwardness that filled the room.

This was all so new for Jon, but the awkwardness was far better than that sick worry he’d felt every time Ygritte had run out during a fight.

Plus, the making up was new too, and that was far, far better than anything with Ygritte had ever been.

It had started as soft and gentle as usually was, but as the awkwardness from the fight fell away, Jon felt like he was rediscovering Sansa. They had fallen into a routine for sex—Sansa comment during the fight hadn’t been that far off the mark. But this was nothing like what they’d fallen into.

This was the passionate loving they’d had when they first started dating.

This was loud, it was messy, it was switching positions, and thrown back heads. It was messy and sweaty, requiring both of them to shower after. It was full of giggling and moaning. It left both of their hair wild. It was sex that would leave marks he’d smile about in the morning.

Jon smiled into the pillow, pulling Sansa and her naked body closer to his own.

Seven hells, he was in love with this woman.

He’d fight with her for the rest of his life if this is what making up was.

 _The rest of his life_ , his brain repeated, mocking.

_Oh, shit._

He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

_Shit._

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this was okay. It's not quite what I wanted it to be, but after working on it for months, this is what I've got.
> 
> The next one up will be marriage talk/proposal.


End file.
